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Saturday, February 06, 2010

When the silence stopped!






An odd week of echoing classrooms and silent corridors is over and next Monday is going to be a moment of considerable horror when unaccustomed faces of pupils pop up all over the place in erstwhile areas of tranquillity and peace.

Back to normal and preparation for the next exam! Already some of my colleagues are starting to write the questions which the hapless pupils are going to have to answer in a couple of weeks – or less! The sound of the relentless rumble of approaching grammar exercises will wipe off the semblance of calm that has settled on the faces of my colleagues as we cheerfully ignored the school bell (actually a particularly repellent siren) as it called us fruitlessly from the staff room to tend to empty classes.

In spite of the fact that I have been able to get my marking done and even complete some satisfying (!) English work and in spite of the fact that I only had contact in the latter part of the week with less than a dozen unfortunates who didn’t go on holiday and choose to stay in school – I was still exhausted by the time I came to leave on Friday afternoon.

However tired I was, it took only a quick wash, a change of clothes and a squirt of aftershave to revive me enough to meet a friend who I had not seen for some time.

It might have worked out that we, who live in Castelldefels, could have met in Cardiff, as both of us were visiting Wales over the New Year. But alas it was not to be and we were forced to accept the mundane and meet outside one of the most expensive supermarkets I have ever known in the area of Castelldefels in which I used to live.

Our chat had a tinge of hysteria to it as we had so much to say to each other and we have made yet another pledge that we will not leave it as long before our next meeting. This is one pledge we intend to keep!

The short, but intense, meeting over, I got food for the evening and film. The food was the more digestible.

Knowing Toni’s penchant for the gruesome I chose a ‘horror’ film from the woefully inadequate video shop in the centre of Castelldefels playa. Chosen on the title alone I came home with ‘Antichrist.’

Within a minute I had stopped watching it and taken up my book. In a couple of minutes more Toni had also stopped viewing and was openly saying that he thought it was even worse than the last ‘Mosaic’ film we had seen.

That last sentence perhaps needs a little clarification. The video shop in Rumney in Cardiff had a fairly large selection of films including latest releases. We sometimes were a little adventurous and ranged outside the normal landscape of recognizable stars and directors and went home with something which often turned out to be remarkable viewable.

Sometimes, but not always. We began to note that the real rubbish was often produced under the ‘Mosaic’ trademark. We spurned such fare and our contempt was shared by the manager of the store who actually refunded us our money after I returned one film with a scathing denunciation of all of its production values. He wholeheartedly agreed and said that there was some sort of agreement that they had to hold a certain number of these duff films, but I thought that repayment was a more than adequate apology. After all, how many times have you heard of a refund given because the film was rubbish?

‘Antichrist’ was not a ‘Mosaic’ film but in some ways it was worse than that because its production values were higher. It had money and no excuse!

I took to my bed in high dudgeon as I felt that I had been cheated and especially as I realized that I had read scathing reviews of this film and I should have put title and vague feelings of disquiet together more appositely.

Ceri and Dianne are almost about to visit and the third floor is an absolute tip with Pickford’s boxes lying around in disorder and the ‘library’ looking as though it has been shelved by a maniac. Something must be done.

And done it undoubtedly has been. Almost. I have been back to IKEA. Book cases have been bought and I sort of know where they are going to be put.

The window in the ‘library’ is never used so one is going to be placed in front of it and I will have to slim a bit if I am going to be able to circumnavigate the full extent of my book room. What is already a snug room is going to be that much more restricted.

The third floor if going to have a re-think and the useless desk which came with the house is going to be thrown. Or at least parts of it are going to be relocated.

This could mean that there will be space for one large full sized Billy (for it is he!) bookcase; one full height skinny Billy bookcase and one full width, half height Billy bookcase. And this will not be enough.

When these bookcases have been built and filled, I have to admit that we will have reached saturation point. Any further bookcases and Billy will start having to pay part of the rent!

It will then, however, be more than clear that the hard decisions which I have been putting off for over two years will have to be faced: book will either have to be placed back into some sort of storage or they will have to be disposed of in other ways. And my heart goes cold just typing those joyless words.

However, for the moment I can relax in the Phoney War self-delusion of not having to do anything because nothing has happened. When the last nail has been driven (yes, there are nails even in an IKEA Billy bookcase) and the last shelf slotted into position. Then we will see what we see.

And there will always be an examination to set, mark or fear to keep my mind away from Fahrenheit 451!

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